


waiting, wanting, wishing

by loonyloopyluna



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, kind of, post-reveal, pretty dang fluffy tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyloopyluna/pseuds/loonyloopyluna
Summary: Marinette and Adrien have known each others' identities for some time now. Their intentions are good, but misunderstandings are bound to happen when no one talks about it. Some things are better left unsaid, but maybe not when their relationship is starting to crack.





	

Marinette loved fashion, in all its forms, but sometimes she wished that people had realized sooner that you didn’t need to suffer permanent damage for it. She was thrilled to be a part of Mr. Agreste’s “100 Years of Fashion” event, of course, but did he really feel the need to get _all_ of the details exactly right? Corsets were great in concept, but they were an absolute pain to wriggle into. **  
**

After five minutes of struggling and two very sore arms, Marinette stalked over to her purse and opened it. “Tikki? Can you give me a hand?”

The kwami’s eyes drifted open blearily. “I… you… hmmm?” she said.

“Sorry. Nothing. Go back to sleep,” Marinette said, bending over and giving Tikki a kiss on the forehead.

“Are you–” Tikki yawned “–sure?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Marinette said firmly. “You need your rest. I got it.”

She gave it a break and put her dress on, letting the bodice hang loosely around her waist and twisted around to see her back in the mirror. She just needed, like, _one_ extra hand, and she’d be fine.

A tapping at the window banished her frustration before it could bubble over again. As she turned around, she heard the sound of it opening, and a chipper voice asked, “Need some help?”

Chat Noir sat lazily on the sill, watching her with one arm slung around his knee and his back against the window pane. Marinette grinned in spite of herself, her shoulders visibly relaxing, and he returned with a wink. He hopped off the sill and skipped over to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be…?” She gestured vaguely at the door, and past that, the hallway that led to his own dressing room.

“Well, someone didn’t close this kitty’s cage all the way, apparently,” he said flippantly.

“That’s not what I meant!”

“No, I know, I’m sorry.” Chat threw himself onto the chaise longue in the corner of the room and covered his eyes with his forearm. “There was a thing.”

“A thing?” Marinette raised her eyebrow.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “There was a cat in a tree. I saw it from the window. So I swooped out and got it down. It’s kinda ironic, actually, if you think about it. And then on my way back I saw a beautiful lady in distress and thought I might be able to lend a hand.” He lifted his head up and grinned cheekily.

Marinette struggled to maintain a straight face and said haughtily, “As a matter of fact, you can.”

Chat clapped his hands together. “Say the word, my lady.”

She turned her back on him and gathered her hair out of the way. “Can you fasten this for me? I can get it tight enough, but I can’t tie it.”

Chat stood up and came over to stand behind her. “That’s it?” he joked. “You don’t need me to yank on the ties with one foot braced against your back, like they do in the movies?”

Marinette laughed. “I don’t think I’d be of much use to you with a set of bruised ribs, kitten.”

Chat made quick work of the corset’s ties, bringing them together into a neat little bow. Marinette turned around to thank him and noticed his face drawn and serious again, his eyes glued to his hands, frozen in place.

“Yes, you would,” he said. She took his hands gently, and his gaze lifted to meet hers. “I’ll always need you, Marinette.”

“Just as much as I’ll always need you,” she said. “We’re a team.”

His eyes slipped back to the floor, and he muttered,  “Of course.”

“You can trust me, Chat. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing if it’s making you upset,” she protested, squeezing his hands tighter. She craned her head to try to catch his eyes again. “Chat. _Adrien._ ”

He relented and looked up. “It’s stupid,” he amended. She continued to look at him, eyebrows raised expectantly, mouth drawn in a sympathetic line.

“It’s just,” he continued, “I feel like… you don’t need me around. Or you don’t like having me around. Or, maybe, actually, both?" He winced. "I, um, I feel like you were going to tell me to piss off and let you work alone, and that you’re only being nice to me anymore because you found out that I’m, well… me. And we’re friends. We… are friends?”

Marinette was floored. “I, uh, wuh– yeah, we’re friends. Chat, that’s ridiculous!” His cat ears flattened against his head, and she backpedalled. “No, sorry, I don’t mean it like that, it’s just– you think I want to get rid of you? _Chaton_ , I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, like all those times you’ve held your own against multiple people at once–against _me_ , even.”

“No, I’m serious!” Marinette said. “Even when you weren’t there, helping me fight, you were helping. Dark Cupid? Couldn’t have done that without you. Puppeteer? Remind me again who got there first, who took out the wifi? Or, let’s talk about the times you were there. Darkblade? You were the one who fought him off with your fencing skills. Pixelator? I would have been screwed if you hadn’t come back, _and_ you saved all those people in the pictures, and–God, if I started naming all the times you saved the day, I could go for hours.

“You know, I do a lot of great stuff, but I make mistakes all the time. And yeah, you mess up sometimes, but you’re also incredible. You do things I never could, and you give me the confidence to do what I can. We work best together that way. Don’t ever think I don’t need you–”

“Yeah, okay, you need me. I’m convenient to have around when you need an extra hand. Well, you need flu shots, too,” he said bitterly. “That doesn’t mean you have to like them.”

“But I do like you!” Marinette said. “And flu shots, but that’s beside the point. I don’t just need you around, I want you around. And if I’ve been acting weird around you lately, it’s only because”–she swallowed hard–”I found out that my best friend is famous, and I didn’t really know what to do about that.”

Chat blinked. “You’re, uh, kinda famous too, _Ladybug_.”

She shook her head. “Yeah, but that doesn’t count. I mean, when I’m Marinette, I’m–well, not nobody, but nobody _important_. But you! You’re always either Adrien Agreste or Chat Noir and that’s… I wanted to give you some space. From the fame stuff, and from me. I thought you might get tired if you found out that the people you were hanging around all the time were actually one person, and, well I know for me at least, sometimes it gets overwhelming getting so much attention. I’m sorry. I didn’t really–”

“No, that’s…” Chat gaped at her for a moment while he struggled to find the words. “That’s just… I didn’t… I mean…”

“You’re such a cat,” Marinette said lightly, ruffling his hair. “Just because people aren’t paying attention to you doesn’t mean they don’t like you." She sighed. "But I am sorry. I should have talked to you about it.”

“God, I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I mean, I guess I was never really sure how you felt about me–Chat, me– in the first place, and then when you started acting weird after we found out–”

“You were acting weird, too!” Marinette retorted, pointing an accusing finger at him.

“All right, yeah, but that’s different.”

“Really?” Marinette took her other hand from his and crossed her arms. “And why’s that?”

“It’s, uh, different, becau– holy shit!”

Chat jumped back a few feet, as if electrocuted. Marinette whipped around. “What?”

“A bee,” he stage-whispered.

“Where–? Oh my god!” Marinette scrambled backwards. “You left the window open?”

“Sorry! Where’s your shoe?”

“Why?”

_“So I can hit it!”_

“You’re not going to kill the bee! It’s not doing anything! It’s just flying.”

“Menacingly!”

“No, Chat!”

“Well, I don’t see you getting cozy with it to send it out!”

“It’s fine. It’s cool. I’ll just, um, wait here. It’ll fly out. Eventually. Hopefully.”

The two of them had backed into a corner, their eyes tracking the bee’s every move. The bee, for its part, bumbled aimlessly around, buzzing along the edges of the window, flirting with the idea of flying back outside. The moment it passed over the threshold of the sill, Chat darted over and slammed the window shut, then leaned back on it and heaved a melodramatic sigh.

Marinette, meanwhile, straightened up and brushed the dust off her skirt. She shrugged the dress over her shoulders and delicately patted her hair into place. “Well, that was a mood changer,” she chuckled nervously. She strode over to here her shoes were laying (funny enough, near where Chat had been standing before the bee ran him off) and slipped into them. She bounced on her toes and pivoted to face Chat. “How do I look?”

He clutched his chest dramatically. “Absolutely ravishing, my lady.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “My, you bounce back quick.”

“Nah,” he said. “But it helps when there’s a cute girl around to distract me.”

She blushed, turning her face furiously to the side to hide it. “You’ve _got_ to stop that.”

“Stop what?” Chat asked innocently, creeping towards her again.

“You know… _that_ ,” Marinette said. “Friends don’t call each other cute, and stuff, usually.”

“What, don’t you think I’m cute?”

“Well, yeah, of course, b-but I wouldn’t say that,” Marinette stuttered. “Because we’re friends. And friends don’t say that all the time. It’s… weird.”

“Ah, but are we friends, Bugaboo?” Chat asked. He was flush with her now, his hands balled into fists, his face aflame under his mask. If he was going to open up to her today, he was going to tell everything.

“Of course we are. I already–”

“Because _I_ was thinking it was a bit of something else, maybe,” he interrupted, putting a little purr behind his words.

“Oh?” she breathed.

He nodded. “And I was just wondering what you thought about that.”

“Really? Well, I, um, actually, was–”

A knock at the door interrupted her, and the two of them whipped around. Nathalie’s voice came from the hallway. “Marinette? May I come in?”

Marinette and Chat gestured at each other wordlessly before, in a panic, Chat dove underneath the chaise and pulled the blanket across so it draped across the floor and shielded him from view. Marinette took a moment to gather herself before opening the door.

Nathalie strode in, a garment bag draped over her arm. She pulled a stylus from her bun and jotted a few notes down on her tablet before looking up. “Oh, good, you’re ready. We’re running a few minutes behind schedule; Adrien seems to have been… misplaced. In any case, here’s your next outfit.” Nathalie laid the garment bag on the chaise and unzipped it, displaying a black flapper dress covered in sequins and feathers.

Almost immediately, a kitten-like sneeze echoed through the room, and Marinette froze. Nathalie looked up. “P-pardon me,” Marinette stammered, giving a strained smile. The sneezing sound came again, and this time, with Nathalie looking at her full-on, there was no disguising it as her own.

Nathalie bent down and flipped the blanket up, exposing Adrien–not Chat, but Adrien–huddling on the floor. What was more, he was wearing a ridiculous unitard that Marinette realized– _oh god, that would be underwear, wouldn’t it?_ He grinned sheepishly and crawled out.

Nathalie said nothing, simply straightened her glasses and tucked her stylus back into her bun. “Right. So, that’s where you’ve been. Adrien, we have a schedule for a reason; try to stick to it.” She turned on her heel and strode away. When she got to the doorway, she turned around, and, giving something that might, upon closer inspection, actually have been a smile, said, “I expect you both out in five minutes.”

“Yes, Ms. Sancoeur.”

“Sorry, Nathalie.”

The door clicked firmly shut, and the two of them turned to each other. Marinette licked her lips nervously. “So, um, you were saying…?”

“A-actually, if I remember right, I think _you_ were saying something,” Adrien said.

“I was, huh?”

“Huh.”

“So…”

“So?”

“So. I, um, was planning to tell you, I think,” Marinette said. “Or, I was, definitely, just not like this; I mean, you literally just told me you didn’t think I wanted you around, so I was going to give you time, and then maybe–”

Plagg flew out from under the chaise, groaning loudly. “Oh my god, you two. _She_ likes _you_ ,” he said, pointing to Adrien, “and _he_ likes _you_.” He pointed to Marinette.

“Yeah, that. Is kind of, basically, what I wanted to say,” Marinette said.

Adrien blushed. “Really? Um, me too.”

“Really?”

“I can’t deal with this right now,” Plagg groaned. “I’m taking a nap.” He burrowed into the blanket, his complaints quickly muffled.

Adrien reached his hand out and tentatively linked one finger with Marinette’s. “So… should we talk about this?”

“Weren’t we just talking about our feelings?” she asked.

“I mean,” he said, taking her other hand and threading their fingers together. “After this. We could go get some ice cream or something.”

“That sounds nice,” Marinette said. “And what do we do until then?” She stepped closer, closing the gap between them.

“I-I don’t know,” Adrien said. “We should probably go do the thing, with the, uh…”

“The stuff, yeah,” Marinette finished. “And the people.”

“Hm. Yeah.”

Neither of them made to move away, and Marinette found her gaze drawn to his cheeks, still flushed with pink, and his lips, so very close to her. She flicked her eyes up to gaze into his, and found him doing the same. “Adrien, we–”

“Marinette?” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Kiss me.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I–”

“ _Please_ ,” he asked. “Before I kiss you.”

“Who’s stopping you?” she asked. She untangled her fingers from his and reached up to put one hand on his cheek. As if that was his cue, he closed his eyes, leaned down, and pressed his lips against hers.

Tension she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying suddenly melted out of her frame as her eyes drifted shut, and she kissed him back earnestly. Sure, this might not have been the first time she’d kissed him, but really, it was the first time _they’d_ kissed. There was no spell to break, no evil plan to thwart, just the two of them choosing each other.

The kiss itself was short, but the two of them had to take a moment to catch their breath. She felt him weave his fingers into her hair, and she slid her hands down to circle his neck. She toyed with the edge of his neckline. He leaned his forehead against hers and came in for another kiss, but she ducked away, her mouth twitching.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Marinette shook her head, suddenly overcome with giggles. “You look like a wrestler in that!” she exclaimed, gesturing to his outfit.

“Yeah, but I can pull it off, can’t I?” he asked, posing ridiculously with his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, but you know what’s an even better look? Actual clothes.” she retorted. “We’ve got–well, probably like two minutes, now.”

Adrien started. “Oh, shit. I have to get dressed. You should go down to makeup. I’ll, uh, be a minute.”

They walked together to the door. “So, a cat in a tree, huh?” Marinette asked, opening it.

“Yeah. Well, I don’t like to brag, but it was amazingly heroic,” Adrien said, leading her down the hallway. “Not that I would have been anything else.”

“Of course not,” Marinette smirked.

“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?” he asked.

She gasped. “I would _never_.”

“Now, I’m almost certain _that_ was.” He halted in front of his dressing room. “This is my stop. I’ll see you in a few minutes, my lady,” he said, bowing. He took her hand and kissed it before releasing it just as quickly.

“I’ll be waiting, kitten,” she said. “Don’t take too long.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr [here](http://chatchevalier.tumblr.com/post/150930910406)!


End file.
